This June, Safari acquired Popforms, including its website, courses, videos, newsletters and interactive exercises. The acquisition grew from a year-long content partnership between the two companies.
Safari is one of the world’s largest online subscription libraries of video training courses and books for professionals. Over 1.7 million people use Safari’s library, which includes more than 30,000 books, videos, audiobooks and conference talks from over 200 publishers and training providers. In 2014, Safari began offering content provided by Popforms, a startup launched the previous year.
Safari itself is a subsidiary of O’Reilly Media, which developed Safari as a joint venture with Pearson in 2001. The venture was a pioneer in the eBook subscription service model, but in contrast with other eBook subscription services, Safari is a niche content provider targeted to business and technology professionals, who pay a higher monthly price to access this more specialized content. O’Reilly Media acquired Pearson’s stake in Safari last year.
Targeting Millennial Managers
Over 50 percent of the millennial generation has moved into management. Popforms’ email-based courses deliver bite-sized content for this group, targeting in particular early career technical managers. Safari is currently offering five such courses for free. These courses teach skills that will benefit all new managers: pitching and public speaking, productivity, learning from mistakes and embracing positivity, “taming” email inboxes, and managing stress.
Safari’s acquisition of Popforms demonstrates the value it places on training the millennial generation. The company has said its customers have asked them for help developing their new generation of leaders and managers, especially in technology fields. Safari’s blog cited a research study in which the millennial generation’s most valued work benefit was training and development. The acquisition of Popforms should help Safari’s customers provide that benefit to their millennial employees.
Millennials are also connected to technology – in fact, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to have one without the other. They consume information online, and bite-sized e-learning is a great way to reach them. Furthermore, millennials believe in continual learning beyond obtaining a degree or certification. They seek out content that will teach them the skills to do their work well. Kate Matsudaira, founder of Popforms, is an example of this trend:
“I didn’t have the budget to hire someone to do sales, so I read some books about sales and start[ed] emailing and calling,” said Matsudaira of the early days of the company.
With its acquisition of Popforms, Safari is providing that continual learning – through online, often bite-sized content – that millennials desire.
Safari is no stranger to bite-sized learning. Andrew Savikas, CEO of Safari, believes the speed of technology requires learning content to be briefer than traditional learning modalities. For Safari, the primary means of delivering content is through eBooks and short videos. These methods are often “the fastest way to transfer knowledge from an expert’s head” so a learner can understand and apply it, he explained.
Millennials tend to define leadership differently than other generations. They believe employees at any level can be leaders, and 78 percent of millennials consider themselves leaders. There is, therefore, a growing demand for leadership training among professionals earlier in their careers. Popforms’ content, while geared toward early technical managers, is of interest to managers in any field and to millennials who are not yet managers, but consider themselves leaders and are interested in developing leadership skills.
It is easy to see the strategy behind Safari’s acquisition of Popforms. Their content and missions are compatible, and Popforms’ target audience expands Safari’s to more broadly encompass an entire career trajectory. Training managers may look to this acquisition and the newly expanded Safari library not only for content, but for evidence of the relevance of online and bite-sized learning and the importance of developing leadership skills early in employees’ careers.
